Return to Wonderland
by BeatrixPlotter
Summary: When Alice's home burns down with her family inside, she's wracked with guilt as the only survivor. Almost comatose and trapped within Rutledge Asylum, a chance reunion with her childhood toy gives her the chance to claim back her sanity.
1. Chapter 1

**Prologue**

_'Fire! Fire! Alice, wake up! You have to wake up!'_

Alice woke up to heat and the acrid smell of burning. She sat up in bed, coughing.

'Mother? Mother, what's happening?'

There was no answer. Her parents' bedroom was at the other end of the house, and so she hadn't really expected them to hear her. However, she could see the smoke beginning to curl underneath her bedroom door.

_Father's still awake and he's put too many logs in the fireplace_, she thought. That's all it is. _He's reading late again and forgotten about it. That must be it._

She knew that wasn't true.

Alice got out of bed, clutching her stuffed rabbit. Rabbit was falling apart from being 'loved too much', as Nanny said. His left ear had been stitched back on, and his fur was rubbed away in several patches, making him look decidedly mangy. He had that look of all well loved toys, in that they looked battered, bruised and decidedly unsanitary, and had never spent a night away from Alice. She gripped him tightly as she opened her door.

The fire was downstairs somewhere, she could hear the flames raging and mutilating her home. The light flickered on the walls, the smoke trailing upstairs to choke her and make her eyes stream.

'Mother? Father!' She ran down the hallway to their door. As she neared it, she could see smoke curling under their door, too. It was coming from inside.

Alice leapt at the door and grasped the doorknob. However, she quickly let go and screamed, as the door was red hot and the metal of the doorknob had burned her hand. Mindless of the heat, she hammered on the door with her little fists. 'Mother! Father! Help me!'

She could hear them coughing inside. 'Come out! We have to get out!' she screamed.

'Alice?' her mother coughed. 'Alice, get out! We're trapped, get Lizzie and get out!'

Alice sobbed. 'Mother...'

'GO!' her mother yelled, then descended into a coughing fit.

She turned on her heel and fled. Lizzie's bedroom was around the corner. She'd wake her up and get out, then go fetch the police, fetch someone, anyone. Someone would save her parents, she was sure of it. She skidded outside Lizzie's door in her bare feet. The floor was getting warmer, the smoke thicker. Alice could barely see through it. Her lungs felt full of it, as if she were drowning in smoke.

'Lizzie!' She tried the door. Locked. Lizzie never locked the door, why had she done so tonight? She slammed her fists against this door too.

'Lizzie! Wake up! Fire! FIRE!'

There was no answer. Crying, Alice tried again. 'Lizzie! Please! We have to go!'

Still nothing. As she hammered, part of the floor gave way, flames licking their way towards her. She tried to scream, but when she inhaled her lungs filled with smoke and ash, and instead she choked. Before the long, the fire had her trapped, having spread between Alice and the stairs.

Sobbing, she tried again. 'Lizzie, please! LIZZIE!' Lizzie never locked her door. She hated locked doors, they made her nervous that she would become trapped. Suddenly, her worst fear had become true. 'LIZZIE!'

Flames began to lap round Alice's feet, burning them. She didn't even feel it. They singed what was left of Rabbit's fur, and began to eat up the hem of Alice's nightgown. Finally she noticed, and batted out the fire with her hands. What now? If she didn't leave, the fire would consume her too.

The window! She ran over and unlatched it, thankful it wasn't too locked. She climbed on the window ledge and looked down, taking a grateful gasp of the cold night air. Would she make it if she jumped? It looked an awfully long way down. There was a few inches of snow, but she thought they wouldn't break her fall.

Alice looked back. The hallway was an inferno now, and Lizzie's door was no longer visible through the smoke and ash.

She tried one last time. 'LIZZIE! WAKE UP!'

There was still no answer.

Fire began to spread below the window, licking it's way up the curtains. She had no other choice.

Alice turned, closed her eyes, and jumped.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter One: Asylum**

The ward was quiet, but what 'quiet' meant in the halls of Rutledge Asylum was that no patients were actively screaming the place down. Dr. Wilson made his way down the dingy corridor to see his next patient, his briefcase in his hand.

He found her door ajar. A nurse was inside, fussing around and making her comfortable, if that were the word for it. Alice Liddell had been more or less comatose since they'd taken her in at the age of eight. Having spent a year recovering in hospital from her injuries, she'd never truly come back around. Most doctors assumed the shock of losing her whole family, plus the fall from the second floor window, was enough to traumatise any little girl. Dr. Wilson was inclined to agree.

'Any change, nurse?'

She shook her head, sadly. 'She's been like this all week, doctor. We've been feeding her, but she won't talk to us. Nothing new, really.'

'No, I suppose not.' He sat down next to the thin iron bed on a spindly chair. There was no colour in the room at all. Apart from the bed and the chair, there wasn't even any furniture to speak of. Cracks ran the length of the walls, and outside, a storm battered the asylum's walls. It was a miserable night, and this was a miserable place to spend it.

He looked at Alice herself. She lay quite still in her bed, the threadbare sheet pulled up to her chest. Her hands lay on the sheet, motionless. the doctor fancied he could see every bone underneath the papery skin. Alice was emaciated, thanks to the fact she barely ate unless the nurses forced some gruel between her lips. Her eyes were wide open, staring at the ceiling, but seeing nothing.

'Alice? Can you hear me?' He laid a hand on her arm. It felt as though it would snap if he applied the slightest bit of pressure.

Alice did not respond.

'A shame, but no real surprise.' He pulled out his briefcase, and extracted a toy from it.

'What's that, doctor?''It's her toy rabbit' he replied. 'She'd been holding it when she escaped from the house fire. We were trying different things to try and bring her back round a few years ago. Restraining her, leaving her unattended in the gardens, leeches, what have you. Nothing was working. We took the rabbit away from her in the hopes she'd make an unholy row about it, but nothing. I found it in my office the other day, and I thought I may as well return it.'

Do you think it will do anything now, Doctor?.'

'You never know. She was very attached to this thing before the fire, I've been told.'

The nurse looked skeptical. 'It's been a long time, Doctor. She turns 18 next week, you know.'

'I live in hope, Nurse.' With that, he slipped the rabbit under Alice's arm carefully, and stood up.

'Come, I need to see several other patients before the night's over.'

She nodded. 'Yes Doctor. Hopefully that old toy will bring her some comfort.'

With that, they left the room, locking the door behind them.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter Two: Rabbit**

Alice floated.

She didn't feel much anymore. It hurt too much to feel. When she returned to her bed, to her room, she remembered, and the pain was too much. Her family, gone. Her home, gone. Her life, over. Remembering drove a hook of pure pain and rage into her soul, and it was unbearable. Now, she floated.

She was dimly aware of someone sat beside her. Alice never paid attention anymore. Various hands poked and prodded at her every day, leaving her no dignity at all. She floated to get away from them. At first, she would wake up and ask, 'Mother?' Whoever was attending to her at the time would have to remind her that Mother was dead. Mother was dead, Father was dead, Lizzie was dead. In the end, Alice stopped coming back.

Whoever it was was poking something under her arm. She ignored it. She didn't care what they were doing to her. With luck, maybe it would kill her. She hoped and hoped they would kill her. She hoped they would grow weary of keeping her alive, and kill her. Perhaps they would just leave her to die. No one would notice if they locked the door and left her there. No family were going to come breaking the door down. She could quietly slip away, back to her family.

No such luck. The door closed, leaving her alone again. The thing sat, lumpy, beneath her arm. Her arm drew instinctively around it. Without thinking, Alice began to rub part of it between her fingers. She recognised the feel of it.

_Rabbit?_

She felt it carefully, as if it would blow away without a moment's notice, nothing more than a puff of smoke. She felt an ear, a button eye, the issing fur on the rabbit's belly.

_Rabbit!_

Alice, slowly, came back to herself. Her eyes focused on the damp, patchy ceiling. She blinked, as though she were coming into the light. She turned her head right, on a neck that felt as stiff as a rod. She fancied she could hear the muscles beneath her skin creaking.

There he was. Rabbit, lying right there in his arms, just as he had all those years ago. He smelled rather musty, but otherwise he was exactly the same.

For the first time in ten years, a smile began to form on Alice's lips.

She had him back. After all this time, she had him back! She thought she'd lost every possession in that fire, but she had Rabbit back! She couldn't remember the last time she had owned anything. She'd never seen a toy after she'd jumped from the window. She hadn't even owned her own nightclothes, as the ones she had been wearing had been burned away.

Just as she was thinking these thoughts, the rabbit turned in her arms. Her breath froze in her lungs. It fixed her with it's button eyed stare. Alice held her breath, her muscles turned to stone.

The rabbit's face ripped open in a wide grin below it's nose. A mouth, it's making itself a mouth, Alice thought. Dusty stuffing spilled from the new aperture. It opened and closed a few times, as if getting used to it's new appendage. Then, it spoke.

_Aliiiiiice_, it groaned.

And then, Alice fell.


End file.
